[429:1] First published in Letters, Conversations and Recollections by S. T. Coleridge, 1836, i. 144. First collected in Poems, 1863, Appendix, p. 391.

LIMBO[429:2]

* * * * *

The sole true Something—This! In Limbo's Den
It frightens Ghosts, as here Ghosts frighten men.
Thence cross'd unseiz'd—and shall some fated hour
Be pulveris'd by Demogorgon's power,
[[430]]And given as poison to annihilate souls— [5]
Even now it shrinks them—they shrink in as Moles
(Nature's mute monks, live mandrakes of the ground)
Creep back from Light—then listen for its sound;—
See but to dread, and dread they know not why—
The natural alien of their negative eye. [10]

'Tis a strange place, this Limbo!—not a Place,
Yet name it so;—where Time and weary Space
Fettered from flight, with night-mare sense of fleeing,
Strive for their last crepuscular half-being;—
Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny hands [15]
Barren and soundless as the measuring sands,
Not mark'd by flit of Shades,—unmeaning they
As moonlight on the dial of the day!
But that is lovely—looks like Human Time,—
An Old Man with a steady look sublime, 20
That stops his earthly task to watch the skies;
But he is blind—a Statue hath such eyes;—
Yet having moonward turn'd his face by chance,
Gazes the orb with moon-like countenance,
With scant white hairs, with foretop bald and high, 25
He gazes still,—his eyeless face all eye;—
As 'twere an organ full of silent sight,
His whole face seemeth to rejoice in light!
Lip touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb—
He seems to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him! [30]
No such sweet sights doth Limbo den immure,
Wall'd round, and made a spirit-jail secure,
[[431]]By the mere horror of blank Naught-at-all,
Whose circumambience doth these ghosts enthral.
A lurid thought is growthless, dull Privation, 35
Yet that is but a Purgatory curse;
Hell knows a fear far worse,
A fear—a future state;—'tis positive Negation!

1817.

FOOTNOTES:

[429:2] First published, in its present shape, from an original MS. in 1893 (inscribed in a notebook). Lines 6-10 ('they shrink . . . negative eye') were first printed in The Friend (1818, iii. 215), and included as a separate fragment with the title 'Moles' in P. W., 1834, i. 259. Lines 11-38 were first printed with the title 'Limbo' in P. W., 1834, i. 272-3. The lines as quoted in The Friend were directed against 'the partisans of a crass and sensual materialism, the advocates of the Nihil nisi ab extra'. The following variants, now first printed, are from a second MS. (MS. S. T. C.) in the possession of Miss Edith Coleridge. In the notebook Limbo is followed by the lines entitled [Ne Plus Ultra], vide post, p. 431.